THE month of May proved to be another busy one for the ladies of Chafford Hundred WI. Our monthly meeting was chaired by president, Janet King, who welcomed 28 Members, one new visitor and our speaker for the evening, Andrea Hatfield.
Andrea gave a very interesting talk and demonstration on the planting and care of summer hanging baskets and told us how she had first discovered her love of gardening at a very young age spending most of her time down in the greenhouse with her father. Andrea now runs her own small business and told us how it all started 20 years ago when she was asked by a relative to prepare some hanging baskets for a wedding. Following on from this she started to give talks and demonstrations and whilst contacting various companies for samples of their products, she was approached by Miracle Grow to do a TV commercial. Over the years Andrea has become very successful having shown her baskets at Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Shows and this year she will be working with Monty Don to create a vertical flower wall at the BBC Gardeners World Live Show at the NEC Birmingham.
Part of the evening was spent discussing arrangements for our forthcoming Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Fete which we are holding jointing with All Saints Church, Drake Road on Saturday, June 16th between 1.00pm and 4.00pm. This should prove to be a fun packed afternoon with many stalls including cakes and produce, tombola and bottles, books, plants, jewellery to name but a few, along with lots of things for the children.
Throughout the month of May our ladies continued to enjoy their weekly walks despite the weather and our bookclub met to discuss our latest read, The Help.
We ended our month with a bit of a “bang” by holding a balloon workshop. Back in February our speaker for the evening was Jan Vaile of Amagico and she came along to demonstrate the art of balloon decoration. Our ladies enjoyed the evening so much that we decided to ask Jan to come back and run a balloon workshop for us, this proved to be one of the most hilarious evenings we have had, grown ladies reduced to revisiting childhood ways. Jan’s patience prevailed and despite the huge amount of laughter, the end result was an array of balloon topiary trees. Who would have thought that a bunch of grown women could have so much fun blowing up balloons!!
Chafford Hundred WI is a very diverse group of ladies of all ages and we meet on the second Thursday evening of every month at The Beacon, All Saints Church, Drake Road. If you have ever considered finding out more about the Women’s Institute then why not come along and join us, your first visit is free and we look forward to welcoming you. For more information contact Patricia Henry on 01375 480532.
